They have searched for tasks on volunteernyc.org — which last month had 30 percent more visitors than in February 2008 — and forced New York Cares, an umbrella organization, to add extra new-volunteer orientations at a Whole Foods Market downtown that quickly booked solid an unheard-of three weeks in advance.

Many who run nonprofits have marveled at the sudden flood of bankers, advertising copywriters, marketing managers, accountants and other professionals eager to lend their formidable but dormant skills. The Financial Clinic, which counsels the working poor on economic matters, recently dispatched an M.I.T.-educated ex-Wall Street type to help people in Chinatown prepare their tax returns.

The Brooklyn borough president, Marty Markowitz, is known for putting on a show, so maybe that is why he spent $38,000 on a tricked-out sport utility vehicle and pays three drivers to cart him around Brooklyn. His brand-new $38,705 black Toyota Highlander Hybrid comes with four-wheel drive, a touchscreen navigational system, heated seats, a power tilt/slide moonroof, running boards and “V.I.P. glass-breakage sensors.” [Daily News]

The Manhattan borough president, Scott M. Stringer, decided to remake the Manhattan office — literally and figuratively — when he took over three years ago. [Daily News]

As the Bronx borough president, Adolfo Carrión Jr., made a production of his annual State of the Borough address, spending thousands on photography, a TelePrompTer, spotlights and sound equipment. In the past two fiscal years, Mr. Carrión, now White House urban policy director, spent about $19,000 on his State of the Borough tours, records show. [Daily News]

Crime & Public Safety

Investigators found that before an inmate was killed on Rikers Island, the Department of Correction was aware of a violent extortion ring. [NYT]

David Tarloff, the admitted killer of an Upper East Side psychiatrist, Kathryn Faughey, has plunged deeper into insanity, just as he was on the brink of being found fit for trial. [New York Post]

An elderly Upper West Side woman was in critical condition after a fire broke out in her eighth-floor apartment across the street from the American Museum of Natural History. Firefighters found the 80-year-old woman unconscious in bed in her apartment on West 77th Street shortly after 1 p.m. [New York Post]

The stampede outside an audition for the Tyra Banks reality television show, "America's Next Top Model," could have been avoided had producers, facing thousands of supermodel hopefuls, simply requested police assistance, sources said. Six women were injured in the run for safety after a smoking car caused panic. [New York Post] (Also see The Daily News.)

The identity of a man rescued from the frigid Hudson River on Saturday after drifting more than four miles is still unknown because he cannot remember his full name, the authorities said Sunday.The man, whose age is estimated to be 45 to 55, could tell the police only that his first name is John. [Daily News]

The uptown tree killer has struck again. More trees — 17 of them — appear to have been attacked with a machete and left to die in Inwood Hill Park in the past few weeks. [Daily News]

Survivors of the East Side crane collapse that killed seven people and injured dozens gathered Sunday, the one-year anniversary of the accident, to remember the victims. About 100 people — friends, family and city officials — placed flowers and taped victims’ photos to a plywood barrier fencing off the site where the 11,000-pound crane came crashing down. [Daily News]

These days, hagglers have nothing to lose and everything to gain. From coffee shops to electronic stores to restaurants, merchants across the city say they are more willing than ever to negotiate prices with their customers. [New York Post]

Heavy-hitting Hamptons real estate brokers are hogging the area’s most exclusive listings — and squeezing out small brokers — by using a computerized service that charges more than $40,000 a year to use, says a federal lawsuit. A data analyst, George Simpson, and his wife, Jean, a broker, filed a $34 million suit in Central Islip against a long list of home sellers and brokerage houses. [New York Post]

Rather than pay the full $20 recommended admission price to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, visitors lately are paying as little as a dollar to walk through the door. [New York Post]

Senator Charles E. Schumer is calling for an investigation of what he says are the state’s unnecessarily high electricity rates. He cited a recent report that New Yorkers pay about 10 percent, or $2.3 billion, a year more than they should. He blamed a secretive auction process in which an industry-created group sets rates. [New York Post]

Jeffrey Ruhalter, a Lower East Side butcher, does not have to watch the news to know that the economy is in the tank. Over the past few months, its heartbreaking effect on the community he feeds has been playing out in his Essex Street butcher shop nearly every day. [Daily News]

NY Waterway is sliding into bankruptcy, Crain’s New York Business reports in this week’s issue. The ferry service is so short of cash that it is preparing a lawsuit against US Airways to recover expenses from rescue efforts after the January splash landing of Flight 1549 in the Hudson River. [Daily News]

Transportation

Driving an 18-wheeler is not what it used to be for the independent truckers who make their living carrying cargo in and out of the Port of New York. The money is just not coming in as it once did. It does not help that these owner-operators live in one of the nation’s costliest areas and that demand for their services is waning as the recession reduces the amount of cargo moving through the port. [New York Post]

Ramez Akladious reportedly slashed a passenger with a box cutter, drove drunk and, to cap it off, hurled ethnic slurs and lunged at a rider — who happened to work for the Taxi and Limousine Commission. At a hearing on Friday, his probationary license was revoked and he was fined $4,350, but he did not show up. [New York Post]

Schools

In a Hunter College course, an assignment to interview a close relative is an exploration into students’ own lives and the sacrifices of their forebears. [NYT]

Susan Dominus’s Big City column: Some of the artwork that will come out of this free time for creative types is probably painfully bad, and some may be masterpieces, but all of it will do something for the people who make it. [NYT]

The blue and gold jumpsuit-and-cape ensemble worn by Elvis Presley at Madison Square Garden on June 10, 1972, is expected to fetch $150,000 when it goes on display in Manhattan to kick off a King-size auction today. [New York Post]

The High Line is ready to bloom. With a grand opening scheduled for June, the first section of the elevated trestle between the meatpacking district and 20th Street has come to life, with grass, trees and thousands of plants in its reconstructed rail bed. [New York Post]

Some residents of Stamford, Conn., where the daytime trash-TV king Jerry Springer is moving his bawdy show, are up in arms over the relocation to their so-called Gold Coast, saying it could damage the area’s moral fiber. [New York Post]

Expect Cardinal Edward M. Egan to wave a little livelier at Tuesday’s St. Patrick’s Day parade — his last at the helm of the archdiocese on a day that has always been a favorite. “St. Patrick’s Day is one of the cardinal’s favorite days of the year,” Cardinal Egan’s spokesman, Joseph Zwilling, said Sunday. [Daily News]

This year on January 14th I rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange. They did not pick my company because of an IPO or anything like that. We are a non-profit celebrating our 20-year anniversary. We operate in 9 states with 23 offices across the United States. We are sustainable with 1,600 employees. Our operating budget has grown over 14% in the last two years and we have solid prospects for expansion. The NYSE agreed that this was a notable accomplishment and gave us the privilege of ringing the bell.

As the founder of this successful venture I constantly question how our team makes this happen? There are obviously a variety of reasons that enabled us to grow so much, but one pervasive theme is “paid volunteerism.” It is the new vocation of generation Yers: (those who were born around 1984). It can also apply to altruistic baby boomers. You know, those of us who want to make a difference as well as a living; those of us who feel that there IS a greater good than a year end bonus.

Over the years I have hired some incredible people. A well-known Washington Insider was a senior strategist. She worked countless hours. She believed in our mission and had a personal interest. We recruited an
executive director with a law degree who left a household name organization. He wanted to know the people he helped. We have people with doctorates, high school diplomas, GEDs, MBAs and nursing degrees, including some Ivy Leaguers. One long timer still believes in her convent school lesson “to whom much is given, much is expected”. They all wanted to make a significant difference, get paid for what they are good at, but most
importantly make a difference. They obviously did and still do.

I look for the best talent I can find from whatever generation. The folks have to work hard, be really smart and fundamentally ethical. Most important, they are optimistic about our culture and our society. They
believe that what President Obama kept saying was correct. Orwell was wrong. Those born or living in 1984 will not wake up in a dystopian society. We just got a bit distracted in the last few decades. Most of the nineties
were a bad hang over from the greed of the eighties and it just got worse.

More and more of us are waking up to the fact that we can make a difference. Although it is tremendously difficult, it is geometrically proportional and very rewarding. Sure we all work to make money but we also work to feel good about what we do. We have made an impact and this is obvious in every facet of our organization. The President kept saying, “Yes we can”. We could, we did and we are still doing. Our optimism will continue into the next decade. It seems as though it is becoming easier and easier to find talent that doesn’t want to join a hedge fund. Whenever I ask my older brother “hey how’s work? He answers, “you don’t get up and go to fun, you go to work”. The majority of people in my organization work very hard, but they have fun. They have fun because they believe in what they do.

I’m glad I don’t have to make the decisions that are facing President Obama. But I do need to continue to find excited and interested people who want to be paid volunteers. The whole “Big Brother is watching” system did not
prevent our current woes. We have to get back to measuring people by their spirit and their talents, not by their net worth or social networks.

My son is 23 years old; he is one on-line course away from his degree in Economics from the College of New Jersey. For the next 9 months he will be a paid volunteer working with orphans with severe developmental disabilities in some of the most primitive areas of Peru. He is an optimistic kid. I want him to return renewed in the American ethic. I want him to not be cynical about government work. I want him to move forward into the next decade as optimistic as his father knowing that we can leave this a betterplace than when we got it.

“Orwell was wrong”
No, Orwell was right. Trust me I know what is or isn’t Orwellian. A proof below:

“A well-known Washington Insider was a senior strategist. She worked countless hours. She believed in our mission and had a personal interest. We recruited an
executive director with a law degree who left a household name organization.”
Reread 1984

A paid volunteer, eh? That must be nice. Where do you go to become one – Saturn or Mars?
I volunteered at a non-profit last year, which was big enough to eventually give me work that only lasted for 2 weeks. The money I made was accounted for before it was spent. When a real job came up at the organization, I was treated as a viable candidate with good chances of being hired. Then my candidacy was eliminated for a reason that could have been picked out of thin air. After developing a professional rapport with the staff for weeks, my abilities were disregarded. Can you guess how much I’m dying to volunteer again? If people can’t make enough of an impression on their employers to keep their jobs in tough times and people who work for free can’t even get a break when one comes along, what makes the theorists so sure that volunteering pays off eventually? There’s really no point if the exploitation isn’t somewhat mutual. When businesses won’t even provide a Metrocard or its monetary equivalent, the notion of networking doesn’t sweeten the pot. The experts tout volunteering with no mention of what should happen to your mounting bills in the meantime.

Ten members of Congress have written to the state Democratic chairwoman telling her not to use any resources to help our junior senator. This has been viewed by some as a slap at Governor Paterson. It is not. It is Kirsten Gillibrand getting a good spanking! But she can take it; she is a sensuous woman.

I am all right with a Tax Increase on the wealthy. I am for a tax decrease on the Middle Society and lower. I hate playing this game. China is the richest Country there almost is! The one thing i superbly hate is selling our jobs over seas. That is why we are in the state of hazard we are in right now! If we could get lots of jobs in this country they can pay taxes and the government could use it wisely. All we buy is this china junk it is a disgrace.

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